all that he did, said--and did not say. This mocking and amorous demon
and rat-catcher of Athens, who made the most insolent youths tremble
and sob, was not only the wisest babbler that has ever lived, but was
just as great in his silence. I would that he had also been silent in
the last moment of his life,--perhaps he might then have belonged to a
still higher order of intellects. Whether it was death, or the poison,
or piety, or wickedness--something or other loosened his tongue at that
moment, and he said: "O Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepios." For him who
has ears, this ludicrous and terrible "last word" implies: "O Crito,
_life is a long sickness!"_ Is it possible! A man like him, who had
lived cheerfully and to all appearance as a soldier,--was a pessimist!
He had merely put on a good demeanour towards life, and had all along
concealed his ultimate judgment, his profoundest sentiment! Socrates,
Socrates _had suffered from life!_ And he also took his revenge for
it--with that veiled, fearful, pious, and blasphemous phrase! Had
even a Socrates to revenge himself? Was there a grain too little of
magnanimity in his superabundant virtue? Ah, my friends! We must
surpass even the Greeks!
341.
_The Heaviest Burden._--What if a demon crept after thee into thy
loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to thee: "This life,
as thou livest it at present, and hast lived it, thou must live it
once more, and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new
in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh,
and all the unspeakably small and great in thy life must come to thee
again, and all in the same series and sequence--and similarly this
spider and this moonlight among the trees, and similarly this moment,
and I myself. The eternal sand-glass of existence will ever be turned
once more, and thou with it, thou speck of dust!"--Wouldst thou not
throw thyself down and gnash thy teeth, and curse the demon that so
spake? Or hast thou once experienced a tremendous moment in which thou
wouldst answer him: "Thou art a God, and never did I hear anything
so divine!" If that thought acquired power over thee as thou art, it
would transform thee, and perhaps crush thee; the question with regard
to all and everything: "Dost thou want this once more, and also for
innumerable times?" would lie as the heaviest burden upon thy activity!
Or, how wouldst thou have to become favourably inclined to thyself and
to life, so as _to long for nothing more ardently_ than for this last
eternal sanctioning and sealing?--
342.
_Incipit Tragœdia._--When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left
his home and the Lake of Urmi, and went into the mountains. There he
enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years did not weary
of it. But at last his heart changed,--and rising one morning with the
rosy dawn, he went before the sun and spake thus to it: "Thou great
star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for whom thou
shinest! For ten years hast thou climbed hither unto my cave: thou
wouldst have wearied of thy light and of the journey, had it not been
for me, mine eagle, and my serpent. But we awaited thee every morning,
took from thee thine overflow, and blessed thee for it. Lo! I am weary
of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much honey; I need
hands outstretched to take it. I would fain bestow and distribute,
until the wise have once more become joyous in their folly, and the
poor happy in their riches. Therefore must I descend into the deep, as
thou doest in the evening, when thou goest behind the sea and givest
light also to the nether-world, thou most rich star! Like thee must I
_go down,_ as men say, to whom I shall descend. Bless me then, thou
tranquil eye, that canst behold even the greatest happiness without
envy! Bless the cup that is about to overflow, that the water may flow
golden out of it, and carry everywhere the reflection of thy bliss! Lo!
This cup is again going to empty itself, and Zarathustra is again going
to be a man."--Thus began Zarathustra's down-going.
BOOK FIFTH
FEARLESS ONES
"Carcasse, tu trembles? Tu tremblerais bien davantage, tu savais, où je
te mène." _Turenne._
343.
_What our Cheerfulness Signifies._--The most important of more recent
events--that "God is dead," that the belief in the Christian God has
become unworthy of belief--already begins to cast its first shadows
over Europe. To the few at least whose eye, whose _suspecting_ glance,
is strong enough and subtle enough for this drama, some sun seems
to have set, some old, profound confidence seems to have changed
into doubt: our old world must seem to them daily more darksome,
distrustful, strange and "old." In the main, however, one may say that
the event itself is far too great, too remote, too much beyond most
people's power of apprehension, for one to suppose that so much as
the report of it could have _reached_ them; not to speak of many who
already knew _what_ had taken place, and what must all collapse now
that this belief had been undermined,--because so much was built upon
it, so much rested on it, and had become one with it: for example, our
entire European morality. This lengthy, vast and uninterrupted process
of crumbling, destruction, ruin and overthrow which is now imminent:
who has realised it sufficiently to-day to have to stand up as the
teacher and herald of such a tremendous logic of terror, as the prophet
of a period of gloom and eclipse, the like of which has probably never
taken place on earth before?... Even we, the born riddle-readers, who
wait as it were on the mountains posted 'twixt to-day and to-morrow,
and engirt by their contradiction, we, the firstlings and premature
children of the coming century, into whose sight especially the shadows
which must forthwith envelop Europe _should_ already have come--how is
it that even we, without genuine sympathy for this period of gloom,
contemplate its advent without any _personal_ solicitude or fear?
Are we still, perhaps, too much under the _immediate effects_ of the
event--and are these effects, especially as regards _ourselves,_
perhaps the reverse of what was to be expected--not at all sad and
depressing, but rather like a new and indescribable variety of light,
happiness, relief, enlivenment, encouragement, and dawning day?... In
fact, we philosophers and "free spirits" feel ourselves irradiated as
by a new dawn by the report that the "old God is dead"; our hearts
overflow with gratitude, astonishment, presentiment and expectation.
At last the horizon seems open once more, granting even that it is not
bright; our ships can at last put out to sea in face of every danger;
every hazard is again permitted to the discerner; the sea, _our_ sea,
again lies open before us; perhaps never before did such an "open sea"
exist.--
344.
_To what Extent even We are still Pious._--It is said with good reason
that convictions have no civic rights in the domain of science: it is
only when a conviction voluntarily condescends to the modesty of an
hypothesis, a preliminary standpoint for experiment, or a regulative
fiction, that its access to the realm of knowledge, and a certain
value therein, can be conceded,--always, however, with the restriction
that it must remain under police supervision, under the police of our
distrust.--Regarded more accurately, however, does not this imply
that only when a conviction _ceases_ to be a conviction can it obtain
admission into science? Does not the discipline of the scientific
spirit just commence when one no longer harbours any conviction?...
It is probably so: only, it remains to be asked whether, _in order
that this discipline may commence,_ it is not necessary that there
should already be a conviction, and in fact one so imperative and
absolute, that it makes a sacrifice of all other convictions. One
sees that science also rests on a belief: there is no science at all
"without premises." The question whether _truth_ is necessary, must
not merely be affirmed beforehand, but must be affirmed to such an
extent that the principle, belief, or conviction finds expression,
that "there is _nothing more necessary_ than truth, and in comparison
with it everything else has only secondary value."--This absolute
will to truth: what is it? Is it the will _not to allow ourselves to
be deceived?_ Is it the will _not to deceive?_ For the will to truth
could also be interpreted in this fashion, provided one included under
the generalisation, "I will not deceive," the special case, "I will
not deceive myself." But why not deceive? Why not allow oneself to be
deceived?--Let it be noted that the reasons for the former eventuality
belong to a category quite different from those for the latter: one
does not want to be deceived oneself, under the supposition that it
is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived,--in this sense
science would be a prolonged process of caution, foresight and utility;
against which, however, one might reasonably make objections. What? is
not-wishing-to-be-deceived really less injurious, less dangerous, less
fatal? What do you know of the character of existence in all its phases
to be able to decide whether the greater advantage is on the side of
absolute distrust, or of absolute trustfulness? In case, however, of
both being necessary, much trusting _and_ much distrusting, whence then
should science derive the absolute belief, the conviction on which it
rests, that truth is more important than anything else, even than every
other conviction? This conviction could not have arisen if truth _and_
untruth had both continually proved themselves to be useful: as is the
case. Thus--the belief in science, which now undeniably exists, cannot
have had its origin in such a utilitarian calculation, but rather _in
spite of_ the fact of the inutility and dangerousness of the "Will
to truth," of "truth at all costs," being continually demonstrated.
"At all costs": alas, we understand that sufficiently well, after
having sacrificed and slaughtered one belief after another at this
altar!--Consequently, "Will to truth" does _not_ imply, "I will not
allow myself to be deceived," but--there is no other alternative--"I
will not deceive, not even myself": _and thus we have reached the
realm of morality._ For, let one just ask oneself fairly: "Why wilt
thou not deceive?" especially if it should seem--and it does seem--as
if life were laid out with a view to appearance, I mean, with a view
to error deceit, dissimulation, delusion, self-delusion; and when on
the other hand it is a matter of fact that the great type of life
has always manifested itself on the side of the most unscrupulous
πολύτροποι. Such an intention might perhaps, to express it mildly,
be a piece of Quixotism, a little enthusiastic craziness; it might
also, however, be something worse, namely, a destructive principle,
hostile to life.... "Will to Truth,"--that might be a concealed Will to
Death.--Thus the question Why is there science? leads back to the moral
problem: _What in general is the purpose of morality,_ if life, nature,
and history are "non-moral"? There is no doubt that the conscientious
man in the daring and extreme sense in which he is presupposed by the
belief in science, _affirms thereby a world other than_ that of life,
nature, and history; and in so far as he affirms this "other world,"
what? must he not just thereby--deny its counterpart, this world, _our_
world?... But what I have in view will now be understood, namely,
that it is always a _metaphysical belief_ on which our belief in
science rests,--and that even we knowing ones of to-day, landless and
anti-metaphysical, still take _our_ fire from the conflagration kindled
by a belief a millennium old, the Christian belief, which was also the
belief of Plato, that God is truth, that the truth is divine.... But
what if this itself always becomes more untrustworthy, what if nothing
any longer proves itself divine, except it be error, blindness, and
falsehood;--what if God himself turns out to be our most persistent
lie?--
345.
_Morality as a Problem._--A defect in personality revenges itself
everywhere: an enfeebled, lank, obliterated, self-disavowing and
disowning personality is no longer fit for anything good--it is least
of all fit for philosophy. "Selflessness" has no value either in
heaven or on earth; the great problems all demand _great love,_ and
it is only the strong, well-rounded, secure spirits, those who have a
solid basis, that are qualified for them. It makes the most material
difference whether a thinker stands personally related to his problems,
having his fate, his need, and even his highest happiness therein; or
merely impersonally, that is to say, if he can only feel and grasp
them with the tentacles of cold, prying thought. In the latter case
I warrant that nothing comes of it: for the great problems, granting
that they let themselves be grasped at all, do not let themselves
be _held_ by toads and weaklings: that has ever been their taste--a
taste also which they share with all high-spirited women.--How is it
that I have not yet met with any one, not even in books, who seems to
have stood to morality in this position, as one who knew morality as
a problem, and this problem as _his own_ personal need, affliction,
pleasure and passion? It is obvious that up to the present morality
has not been a problem at all; it has rather been the very ground on
which people have met after all distrust, dissension and contradiction,
the hallowed place of peace, where thinkers could obtain rest even
from themselves, could recover breath and revive. I see no one who
has ventured to _criticise_ the estimates of moral worth. I miss in
this connection even the attempts of scientific curiosity, and the
fastidious, groping imagination of psychologists and historians, which
easily anticipates a problem and catches it on the wing, without
rightly knowing what it catches. With difficulty I have discovered
some scanty data for the purpose of furnishing a _history of the
origin_ of these feelings and estimates of value (which is something
different from a criticism of them, and also something different from
a history of ethical systems). In an individual case I have done
everything to encourage the inclination and talent for this kind of
history--in vain, as it would seem to me at present. There is little to
be learned from those historians of morality (especially Englishmen):
they themselves are usually, quite unsuspiciously, under the influence
of a definite morality, and act unwittingly as its armour-bearers and
followers--perhaps still repeating sincerely the popular superstition
of Christian Europe, that the characteristic of moral action consists
in abnegation, self-denial, self-sacrifice, or in fellow-feeling and
fellow-suffering. The usual error in their premises is their insistence
on a certain _consensus_ among human beings, at least among civilised
human beings, with regard to certain propositions of morality, from
thence they conclude that these propositions are absolutely binding
even upon you and me; or reversely, they come to the conclusion that
_no_ morality is binding, after the truth has dawned upon them that
among different peoples moral valuations are _necessarily_ different:
both of which conclusions are equally childish follies. The error
of the more subtle amongst them is that they discover and criticise
the probably foolish opinions of a people about its own morality, or
the opinions of mankind about human morality generally (they treat
accordingly of its origin, its religious sanctions, the superstition
of free will, and such matters), and they think that just by so doing
they have criticised the morality itself. But the worth of a precept,
"Thou shalt," is fundamentally different from and independent of such
opinions about it, and must be distinguished from the weeds of error
with which it has perhaps been overgrown: just as the worth of a
medicine to a sick person is altogether independent of the question
whether he has a scientific opinion about medicine, or merely thinks
about it as an old wife would do. A morality could even have grown _out
of_ an error: but with this knowledge the problem of its worth would
not even be touched.--Thus, no one hitherto has tested the _value_
of that most celebrated of all medicines, called morality: for which
purpose it is first of all necessary for one--_to call it in question._
Well, that is just our work.--
346.
_Our Note of Interrogation._--But you don't understand it? As a matter
of fact, an effort will be necessary in order to understand us. We
seek for words; we seek perhaps also for ears. Who are we after all?
If we wanted simply to call ourselves in older phraseology, atheists,
unbelievers, or even immoralists, we should still be far from thinking
ourselves designated thereby: we are all three in too late a phase for
people generally to conceive, for _you,_ my inquisitive friends, to be
able to conceive, what is our state of mind under the circumstances.
No! we have no longer the bitterness and passion of him who has
broken loose, who has to make for himself a belief, a goal, and even
a martyrdom out of his unbelief! We have become saturated with the
conviction (and have grown cold and hard in it) that things are not
at all divinely ordered in this world, nor even according to human
standards do they go on rationally, mercifully, or justly: we know
the fact that the world in which we live is ungodly, immoral, and
"inhuman,"--we have far too long interpreted it to ourselves falsely
and mendaciously, according to the wish and will of our veneration,
that is to say, according to our _need._ For man is a venerating
animal! But he is also a distrustful animal: and that the world is
_not_ worth what we believed it to be worth is about the surest thing
our distrust has at last managed to grasp. So much distrust, so much
philosophy! We take good care not to say that the world is of _less_
value: it seems to us at present absolutely ridiculous when man claims
to devise values _to surpass_ the values of the actual world,--it is
precisely from that point that we have retraced our steps; as from
an extravagant error of human conceit and irrationality, which for a
long period has not been recognised as such. This error had its last
expression in modern Pessimism; an older and stronger manifestation
in the teaching of Buddha; but Christianity also contains it, more
dubiously, to be sure, and more ambiguously, but none the less
seductive on that account. The whole attitude of "man _versus_ the
world," man as world-denying principle, man as the standard of the
value of things, as judge of the world, who in the end puts existence
itself on his scales and finds it too light--the monstrous impertinence
of this attitude has dawned upon us as such, and has disgusted us,--we
now laugh when we find, "Man _and_ World" placed beside one another,
separated by the sublime presumption of the little word "and"! But how
is it? Have we not in our very laughing just made a further step in
despising mankind? And consequently also in Pessimism, in despising
the existence cognisable _by us?_ Have we not just thereby awakened
suspicion that there is an opposition between the world in which we
have hitherto been at home with our venerations--for the sake of
which we perhaps _endure_ life--and another world _which we ourselves
are:_ an inexorable, radical, most profound suspicion concerning
ourselves, which is continually getting us Europeans more annoyingly
into its power, and could easily face the coming generation with the
terrible alternative: Either do away with your venerations, or--_with
yourselves!"_ The latter would be Nihilism--but would not the former
also be Nihilism? This is _our_ note of interrogation.
347.
_Believers and their Need of Belief._--How much _faith_ a person
requires in order to flourish, how much "fixed opinion" he requires
which he does not wish to have shaken, because he _holds_ himself
thereby--is a measure of his power (or more plainly speaking, of his
weakness). Most people in old Europe, as it seems to me, still need
Christianity at present, and on that account it still finds belief. For
such is man: a theological dogma might be refuted to him a thousand
times,--provided, however, that he had need of it, he would again and
again accept it as "true,"--according to the famous "proof of power"
of which the Bible speaks. Some have still need of metaphysics; but
also the impatient _longing for certainty_ which at present discharges
itself in scientific, positivist fashion among large numbers of the
people, the longing by all means to get at something stable (while
on account of the warmth of the longing the establishing of the
certainty is more leisurely and negligently undertaken):--even this is
still the longing for a hold, a support; in short, the _instinct of
weakness,_ which, while not actually creating religions, metaphysics,
and convictions of all kinds, nevertheless--preserves them. In
fact, around all these positivist systems there fume the vapours
of a certain pessimistic gloom, something of weariness, fatalism,
disillusionment, and fear of new disillusionment--or else manifest
animosity, ill-humour, anarchic exasperation, and whatever there is of
symptom or masquerade of the feeling of weakness. Even the readiness
with which our cleverest contemporaries get lost in wretched corners
and alleys, for example, in Vaterländerei (so I designate Jingoism,
called _chauvinisme_ in France, and "_deutsch_" in Germany), or in
petty æsthetic creeds in the manner of Parisian _naturalisme_ (which
only brings into prominence and uncovers--_that_ aspect of nature which
excites simultaneously disgust and astonishment--they like at present
to call this aspect _la vérité vraie_, or in Nihilism in the St
Petersburg style (that is to say, in the _belief in unbelief,_ even to
martyrdom for it):--this shows always and above all the need of belief,
support, backbone, and buttress.... Belief is always most desired, most
pressingly needed, where there is a lack of will: for the will, as
emotion of command, is the distinguishing characteristic of sovereignty
and power. That is to say, the less a person knows how to command,
the more urgent is his desire for that; which commands, and commands
sternly,--a God, a prince, a caste, a physician, a confessor, a dogma,
a party conscience. From whence perhaps it could be inferred that the
two world-religions, Buddhism and Christianity, might well have had the
cause of their rise, and especially of their rapid extension, in an
extraordinary _malady of the will_ And in truth it has been so: both
religions lighted upon a longing, monstrously exaggerated by malady of
the will, for an imperative, a "Thou-shalt," a longing going the length
of despair; both religions were teachers of fanaticism in times of
slackness of will-power, and thereby offered to innumerable persons a
support, a new possibility of exercising will, an enjoyment in willing.
For in fact fanaticism is the sole "volitional strength" to which the
weak and irresolute can be excited, as a sort of hypnotising of the
entire sensory-intellectual system, in favour of the over-abundant
nutrition (hypertrophy) of a particular point of view and a particular
sentiment, which then dominates--the Christian calls it his _faith._
When a man arrives at the fundamental conviction that he _requires_ to
be commanded, he becomes "a believer." Reversely, one could imagine
a delight and a power of self-determining, and a _freedom_ of will,
whereby a spirit could bid farewell to every belief, to every wish for
certainty, accustomed as it would be to support itself on slender cords
and possibilities, and to dance even on the verge of abysses. Such a
spirit would be the _free spirit par excellence._
348.